Letters to the Editor
krskrft
Published Letters: 3 Editor's Choice: 1
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For anybody interested in this topic...
[Read the article: Geisha guys: Japan's hottest new accessory]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]For anybody interested in this topic, I recommend that you watch The Great Happiness Space (dir. Jake Clennell), a documentary about "host boys" in Osaka, Japan. The interesting thing Clennell points out is that much of the business these clubs get is from female sex workers who have a fair amount of money to spend, and when they do, they decide to spend it on the fantasies of "normal" or "ideal" relations woven by host boys. So, it isn't just a case of rich women playing around with boy toys. There is actually a far more complex, interesting, and quite depressing element to this particular economy.
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You guys...
[Read the article: Geisha guys: Japan's hottest new accessory]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]You guys honestly need to see The Great Happiness Space. The hosts depicted in that documentary seem like incredibly charming, highly-skilled entertainers. They have to weigh every single thing they say as a calculation which either makes the client a return customer or a one-and-done fling. Not to mention the fact that they're often bouncing around between several clients at the same time, playing them off one another in order to get them to spend more money. It's not an incredibly moral job, in terms of how the hosts treat their sometimes pathetically deluded and attached customers (kind of like selling a drink to an alcoholic), but it's hard to say that these men--the ones who are successful at any rate--aren't skilled workers.
Also, again, it's not just rich professional women getting off with boy toys. Much of the sustenance of the male host industry in Japan is provided by female sex workers who either can't or don't care to find "ideal" relationships in their ordinary lives. It's kind of sad to hear the story of a female sex worker who makes loads of money, but is so desperate for that fantasy of an ideal relationship that she spends nearly all the money she makes living out this fantasy with male hosts on a weekly basis, honestly believing that it contains something real. Knowing this, it's hard to chalk up the male hosts as an example of role reversal, because in this case, you have money earned by female sex industry workers simply being funneled into the male sex industry, and as I understand, most of these guys are just banking the cash, not going back and spending it on female sex workers. Doesn't sound like such a great deal for women if you look at it that way, at least not economically speaking.
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What is with all the technophobia?
[Read the article: Evernote: Software to help you remember everything, forever]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]It seems that one could easily take or leave whatever is saved on Evernote. Participation doesn't imply that one must obsessively catalogue everything he or she comes in contact with. Will some people catalogue more obsessively than others? Sure. But the extent to which this is "healthy" or "unhealthy" is completely relative, and it seems like the technophobic responses don't take into account the fact that one mustn't dive in head first and become one of Neal Stephenson's "gargoyles" in order to use the service.